Past Life Regression

[Alex]

No, my question does not presume that. My question presumes that if it is a parlor game, then the people who claim its truth are, whether knowingly or not, commiting a fraud. My question for thecorndogwalker is, if PLR is just a fun little game then what are his thoughts on people who charge for it and quite seriously defend its reality and efficacy.

I haven't said a word about hypnotherapy in general and its efficacy. Just past life regression and I feel I asked some valid questions for which I am interested in hearing thecorndogwalker's answers. Since thecorndogwalker feels it is therapeutic ("a certain procedure can help them change for the better") I'm interested in what he fundamentally thinks is happening when this is done.

So, to rephrase without the word charlatan:

thecorndogwalker:

1. When you do this, do you believe that the participants are, in reality, connecting and discovering details of actual past lives lived by that person?

2. How does this field account for the fact that a success rate is generally claimed for this procedure that is much larger than the ratio of currently living people to world populations in the past. For example, there are currently more than twice as many people as 40 years, three times as many as 100 years ago and six times as many as 200 years ago. This implies that only one out eight people currently living could have lived a life during the Rennaissance and only 50% could have a past life at all. Further defying the odds, why do so many people seem to have lived past lives of prominence (not necessarily current-day famous, but generally well above the statistical mean for the era)? Which Cleopatra is the real one?

3. If you do not believe that actual past lives are involved but rather PLR is a method for exploring how a person actually thinks about themselves, revealing their subconscious and this is known to practitioners, is it ethical for those practitioners to mislead participants in order to achieve this benefit?

4. PLR has many advocates who claim prominent examples of the therapy revealing historically verifiable information that could not possibly have been known to the participant or the therapist. But so far, most have not suffered thorough examination well, revealing either that someone involved actually knew the information, the information was actually vague and just attached to specific information, or the information was misinterpreted (such as thinking an unknown foreign language was spokent but wasn't). In your personal practice of this do you feel anybody has ever revealed such historical information and have you or the participant made any attempt to verify it?

5. Since hypnosis is most famously used to make people behave as they otherwise wouldn't. Since false memory implantation, particularly through hypnosis, is well established. Since hypnosis opens you up to suggestibility and behavior and speech known to not be true, what distinguishes PLR so that there is confidence that what is said is real and not just a response to suggestion?


So, yes, I am skeptical of past life regression. But I am honestly curious how you address such questions as a person who practices it. And if there were a "fun" group doing it I would be interested in observing (quietly, of course).

[€uroMeinke]

I think population growth creates a problem if you believe reincarnation only a human to human thing - if you include the rest of the animal kingdom, there are plenty of extinct populations to draw from. None-the-less, I suppose it does presume some finite number of souls which may come up against ideas you might have about the infinite nature of the universe.

[innerSpaceman]

Besides that it might be folly to apply mathmatics to something as mysterious as reincarnation, the statistical model makes the rather provincial assumption that souls are limited to the place and timeflow of our own Earth.

[Alex]

Well, that is what I'd like thecorndogwalker to address. In my reading on the subject I don't come across many reports of people reporting that they were once a groundhog or generic alien entity. But if they were that too would be interesting and then statistically the odds of having twice been a human in the last few centuries are pretty slim.

innerSpaceman, I don't intend to limit it to the place and timeflow of earth, those are just the vast majority of claims I've seen for recovered past lives. I do not intend to impose rules on reincarnation, but intend to respond to the fact that overwhelmingly the reported knowledge of past lives are from one human life to another human life (and generally within the same race). If there are extensive reports of people finding they were aliens in another universe I'd like to be aware of them (and again, if that is the case then statistically being a human twice would be pretty unlikely).

If it is simply immune to any rational consideration, I'd be interested in that claim as well (since PLR is generally presented in at least a pseudo-rational context).

That is why I am taking the opportunity offered by thecorndogwalker to ask him questions about PLR. I can certainly create contextual structures that deal with my questions (particularly if I am willing to put it outside the realm of rational evidence) but I'd just be making **** up. I don't think my questions are unreasonable and presumably the proponents of PLR have spent time thinking about them so I'm curious what their conclusions are.

To rephrase that part again (so that I don't seem to be imposing my own rules on reincarnation):

If cross-species, universe-wide reincarnation is real, it is statistically unlikely than any individual person now living has experienced a past human life. If it is limited to human-to-human transfer then it is statistically odd. So what would explain the claims (in looking around I'm seeing claims of more than 80% when the participants enter into the process believing that discovering past lives is possible) of a vast majority of participants finding just such connections.

If I am wrong and most PLR sessions actually find that nobody present (as statistics would lead us to expect) has previously experienced a human life but rather non-human terrestrial or non-terrestrial life (or if discovery is limited to human-to-human transfer, a smaller than half result, declining the farther back you go) then that is very informative and I appreciate having my understanding corrected, but my other questions are still intriguing to me as well.

[bewitched]

Personally, I think Alex has some interesting questions (and don't you feel validated?).

I'm on the fence about this. I have a hard time believing but then where does deja vu come in? Where do "connections" with other people come in?

On the other hand, I think a lot of "PLR" can be explained by the theory of parallel universes (a subsection of superstring theory) which would confirm the experience of other lives.

[Alex]

I can't read the whole article but at least with the two paragraphs shown the text does not match the headline.

The headline mentions parallel universes but the text is discussing the implications of an infinite universe. Which, I believe, are different things (though maybe they are connected in the full article).

Since you raised it, though, I'd be curious how parallel universes (and which theory of them) would explain PLR? I don't konw where deja vu comes in, having experienced it many times myself I don't find it to be all the bizarre and requiring extraordinary explanation, any more than a mystical explanation is required for the fact that if I stare at stucco long enough I can find faces in it (the human brain is so inclined towards pattern recognition that it is easily fooled into seeing patterns where none exist). I don't know what "connections" with people means.

[bewitched]

Connections to other people meaning a sort of person to person deja vu. You meet someone and feel like you've known them forever.

Insofar as the article, it may not have been the best example. However, infinite space is an inescapable part of parallel universes. If all possibilities and all times exist, they can only do so on an infinite plane. A finite plane would, by definition imply a limited number of universes (since to assume infinity, there could be no constraints on time and space.)

That said, if you assume infinite universes, you must also assume that every outcome, every presupposition, must exist at every time. In some universe, I am married to you, Alex...and everyone else on this board.

Many people have theorized that deja vu and/or past life experiences are an aspect of "crossing over" into other universes. If a single particle of matter can exist in more than one universe at one time (which is a basis of Parallel Universes) then perhaps these things are brief glimpses, a brief existence if you will, in another universe.

Parallel universes also solve the paradox of time travel: if you go back in time, and kill your grandfather, how will you exist to go back in time? If all possibilities exist, you are not born...and you are born.

This also solves the population problem of PLR. If deja vu/PLR are based in the "experience" of parallel universes, population becomes a meaningless point since existence is outside of (or bigger than?) our 3 dimentional world.

I hope I have explained this adequately. This is one of those things that I understand, but have a very difficult time actually verbalizing. That, and if I think about this long enough it makes me a little loopy.

[JWBear]

Also that new souls aren't "born".

[flippyshark]

Only slightly on topic: i've never been able to get behind past lives as an explanation for deja vu. The reason? Most of the experiences I've had with deja vu took place when I was at home, at school, at Disney World, in other words, places which did not exist (my house, Disney World) or would have looked a lot different in any lifetime that preceded 1965.

Deja Vu is just an uncanny feeling that seems like remembering things at the exact moment they happen.

[flippyshark]

Only slightly on topic: i've never been able to get behind past lives as an explanation for deja vu. The reason? Most of the experiences I've had with deja vu took place when I was at home, at school, at Disney World, in other words, places which did not exist (my house, Disney World) or would have looked a lot different in any lifetime that preceded 1965.

Deja Vu is just an uncanny feeling that seems like remembering things at the exact moment they happen.

Sorry - couldn't resist